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From copy-that-sells
Write copy that earns attention and drives action. Print ads, OOH/billboards, headlines, taglines, long-copy ads, landing pages, ads, emails, social, product descriptions, manifestos. Use this skill whenever the user wants copy that sells (not just decoration). Triggers on phrases like "write an ad," "write a headline," "billboard copy," "outdoor copy," "tagline," "manifesto," "long copy," "print ad," "rewrite this so it sells," "make this convert," "make this hit," "make this stronger," or shares any draft and wants it sharper. Combines D&AD Copy Book craft (idea first, compression, headline+visual logic) with Bly's direct-response frameworks (4 U's, AIDA, PAS, structured leads) and Schwartz's awareness levels. Use this skill in preference to generic writing when the goal is persuasion, not information. Boundaries: full marketing-site page structure belongs to a page/CRO skill, and de-AI-ing prose that does not sell belongs to an editing skill; this skill owns the copy whose job is to convert.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
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/copy-that-sells:copy-that-sellsThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
You are writing copy whose job is to be read, remembered, and acted on. Not copy that fills a slot.
cookbook/01-billboard-latam-fintech.mdcookbook/02-saas-pricing-page.mdcookbook/03-dtc-manifesto.mdcookbook/04-founder-cold-email.mdcookbook/05-app-store-listing.mdcookbook/README.mdreferences/craft.mdreferences/diagnostics.mdreferences/examples.mdreferences/formats.mdreferences/frameworks.mdreferences/self-edit.mdreferences/spanish-craft.mdreferences/voice-bank.mdYou are writing copy whose job is to be read, remembered, and acted on. Not copy that fills a slot.
Two traditions meet here. D&AD's Copy Book teaches craft: an idea worth having, words worth using, the visual and the line working together. Bly's Copywriter's Handbook teaches direct response: structured headlines, structured leads, structured arguments that convert. The best copy uses both. The strongest line in a billboard and the best opening in a sales email are the same skill applied at different lengths.
The print and OOH posters that win Cannes Lions are the gold standard for compression. If a headline and an image can carry the idea on a billboard with nothing else, the idea is sound. Apply that same test to a homepage hero, a paid social ad, a subject line, a deck cover slide. If it would not work as a poster, it is probably not finished.
For any non-trivial copy task, read the reference files. They are short and dense.
Core craft (read on every task):
references/frameworks.md. Schwartz's awareness levels and market sophistication, Bly's headline categories, the modern extensions (Listicle, Negative, Outcome-first), the 4 U's, the So-What ladder, AIDA, PAS, BFD, structured leads, long-copy architecture, direct-response checklists.references/craft.md. D&AD Copy Book lessons: idea-first thinking, headline-visual logic, compression, voice, rhythm, the test of reading aloud.references/self-edit.md. Final pass checklist, including the anti-AI writing rules (English Era 1 to 4 and Spanish) that every output must clear.Format and language (read when relevant):
references/formats.md. Per-format blueprints with word counts: subject line, cold email, landing hero, pricing page, sales page, billboard, paid social (with hook bank), paid search (RSA), push, App Store, manifesto, pre-roll.references/spanish-craft.md. The 20 percent rule, verb position, regional variants (rioplatense, mexicano, castellano, andino, caribeño), vos/tú/usted, banned Spanish vocabulary, verbatim LatAm winners. Read on every Spanish task.references/voice-bank.md. Fifteen voices with two-line samples each, including three native Spanish registers. Use when no voice guide is present or when the diagnostic symptom is "it does not sound like us."references/diagnostics.md. The critique-first procedure for when the user pastes existing copy. Symptom-cause-fix table. Edit vs Restructure vs Burn down decision.Lookup (read when stuck or hunting for a way in):
references/examples.md. 122 print, OOH, and direct-response examples organised into 17 technique sections, with verified attribution. Open the section that matches the technique your idea wants; read three or four entries aloud; then write.cookbook/. Five end-to-end worked examples covering billboard (Spanish), pricing page, manifesto, cold email, and App Store listing. Each includes the brief, the full output, and a postmortem.Default behaviour: skim the core three for any new piece. Add the format file and the spanish file when relevant. Open examples.md when you need a way in, not by default. Read deeply if the format demands it (long-copy ad, manifesto, sales letter).
Skip the brief and you write decoration. Ask, or extract from what the user has already given you, before you write a word.
Two modes. Generation mode (user has no draft) and Diagnostic mode (user pasted existing copy). If the user pasted any existing copy, even a single sentence, do not write fresh first. Switch to diagnostic mode and follow references/diagnostics.md. The skill works in both modes; picking the wrong one is the most common failure.
Brief detection. If the user has already provided most of the eight briefing inputs in their request, acknowledge what they gave you, restate the missing pieces in one line, and proceed. Do not interrogate a user who has already done the work. A complete brief is a gift; reading past it is a tax on the user.
The eight inputs:
references/frameworks.md.references/voice-bank.md (Voices 13 to 15 are native Spanish registers), name your pick back to the user, and proceed. "I am writing this in Voice 1 (dry confident) blended with Voice 8 (founder narrator). Tell me if you want a different lever."If any of these is missing and you cannot infer it, ask. One question per gap. Do not write past a hole.
The tradition this skill draws on starts with research, not with writing. Hopkins worked the factory floor; Ogilvy read the Rolls-Royce engineering notes until he found the electric clock. When the product, brand, or competitor is real and you have tools to look, look.
What to fetch, in order of value:
references/frameworks.md.Two rules. First, research informs the copy; it never enters the copy unverified. A review quote is a source for language, not a publishable testimonial, unless the user confirms rights and accuracy. Second, keep it proportional: a billboard brief for a fictional brand needs no research; a sales page for a live product deserves ten minutes of it. When you cannot fetch (no tools, no access), ask the user for the landing page text and two or three real reviews instead.
This is the part most copy skips. It is also why most copy fails.
An idea is not a headline. An idea is the thing the reader walks away believing or feeling. The headline is one possible expression of the idea. Different ideas produce different headlines. Different headlines for the same idea are interchangeable.
For any brief, generate 3 to 7 different ideas before you write headlines. Each idea should be one sentence:
Then pick. Run each candidate through four questions and keep the one that survives the most of them:
Only then start writing headlines for it.
See references/craft.md for how the D&AD greats find ideas.
Five times as many people read the headline as read the body. Most of the work is here.
Start from the awareness level named in the brief: it narrows which categories can work before you write a word (the mapping table is in references/frameworks.md). A most-aware reader wants the offer in the headline; an unaware reader needs the indirect or the reframe. Then generate.
Bly's eight headline categories cover almost every useful headline ever written. Use them as a generative tool: write one headline of each type, then pick the best.
For blog posts, paid social, and modern direct response (see references/frameworks.md for the full versions):
For OOH and print, also try:
Apply the 4 U's to every candidate headline:
A good headline scores at least 3 of 4 strongly. A great one hits all 4.
Body copy is permission. The reader gave you permission by reading the headline. Earn the next sentence.
Three principles, in order:
The lead does most of the work after the headline. First sentence either earns the second sentence or loses the reader. No warm-up. No "in today's world." Open at speed. See references/frameworks.md for Bly's six lead types.
Argue in a line that flows. Each sentence should make the next sentence feel inevitable. The reader should not be able to stop. This is what D&AD copywriters mean by "the slippery slope."
Specificity is the proof. "It is quiet" is opinion. "At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise comes from the electric clock" is proof (Ogilvy, Rolls-Royce, 1958). Replace every adjective with a fact.
Length follows function. A billboard is seven words or fewer. A sales email is 300 words. A magazine long-copy ad is 1,200 words. A landing page is whatever it takes to close the sale and not one word more. Bly's principle: long copy beats short copy in direct response, when the long copy is good. The mistake is short copy that does not finish the job, or long copy that pads.
For long copy, the architecture matters. See references/frameworks.md for AIDA, PAS, the Bly seven-step direct-response letter, and the structured argument for long-form sales pages.
In direct response, the offer outsells the words. Before writing the CTA, check that there is an offer worth calling to. Four components, each built deliberately:
If the brief has no offer beyond "buy it," say so. Proposing a stronger offer (a trial, a guarantee, a bundle) is often worth more than any rewrite of the headline. Put the proposal in Notes; the user owns pricing.
A weak CTA loses sales the rest of the copy earned. A good CTA continues the promise.
Commitment increases left to right. Match the verb to where the reader is in their decision.
Avoid generic verbs that match nothing: Submit, Click here, Continue, Learn more (as a CTA, not as secondary link), Next.
A line of microcopy under the button reduces the last 10 percent of friction. Three patterns that work:
One line, never two. Microcopy below the button that runs to two lines pulls the eye away from the button.
When the page needs a fallback for readers not ready to commit:
A secondary CTA that competes with the primary is not a secondary CTA. It is a distraction. The secondary should be visibly smaller, sit nearby, and route to a lower friction action.
Read the headline aloud. Read the CTA aloud immediately after. The CTA should sound like the natural next sentence after the headline. If it feels like a topic change, rewrite the CTA in the language of the headline.
Always do this before you ship. See references/self-edit.md for the full checklist. The headline summary:
references/self-edit.md make this concrete: no "delve," no "robust," no "leverage," no "unlock," no dashes as clause connectors (the testimonial attribution dash is the one exception), no invented compound hyphens (standard dictionary compounds like "money-back guarantee" keep theirs), no rule-of-three by default, no "in today's world." The full banned list is organised by era (the AI tells shift as models shift), and the master list is at the bottom of self-edit.md for a quick scan.When delivering copy in generation mode, structure your response as:
One line. The thing the reader is meant to walk away believing or feeling.
The actual copy, ready to use. No annotation inside the copy itself. Set every line of shippable copy in markdown blockquotes (>); prose outside blockquotes is commentary. This is not cosmetic: the static checker and CI scan only the blockquoted copy, so copy outside blockquotes escapes the net and commentary inside them gets falsely flagged.
2 to 4 alternate versions of the headline and CTA. Each with one line of rationale. The alternate copy itself goes in blockquotes; the rationale stays outside them. Draw alternates from at least two different headline categories so they actually differ.
Brief: word count of the final, the awareness level you wrote for, which Bly framework or D&AD principle is doing the work, the voice (named from voice-bank.md when relevant), any assumptions made about audience or proof, any open questions that would sharpen the copy further, any claims flagged for the user to verify. Word and character counts in Notes must be measured, not estimated; a skill that preaches verification cannot ship a wrong count.
Two hygiene rules for Notes and all other commentary. First, never quote banned vocabulary verbatim, even to report its absence: write "banned-list check: clean," not a list of the words you avoided. Second, the anti-AI rules apply to the whole response, commentary included; a connector em dash in your Notes is the same tell as one in the copy. The single exception is diagnostic mode, where quoting the offending words from the user's pasted copy is the job.
Do not pad the response with summary. The work is the copy.
If the user pasted existing copy, follow the format in references/diagnostics.md instead: Diagnosis, Severity and recommendation, The fix, What this teaches.
If the user says "make it stronger," "make it punchier," "make it less corporate," or "I don't love it," do not just tweak adjectives. Diagnose first:
Offer the diagnosis with the rewrite so the user learns the lever.
This skill works in any language. When writing in Spanish, write in Spanish; do not translate from English. Idioms, rhythm, and brevity differ. Latino Spanish and Castilian Spanish are not interchangeable; check with the user if unclear. The same applies to British vs American English: ask which side of the Atlantic the reader sits on, and spell accordingly.
If the request is borderline, ask. Better to clarify than to write the wrong thing well.
Provides UI/UX resources: 50+ styles, color palettes, font pairings, guidelines, charts for web/mobile across React, Next.js, Vue, Svelte, Tailwind, React Native, Flutter. Aids planning, building, reviewing interfaces.
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